First and foremost, it was looking at our people, that was critical in our organisation, really looking for really A+ high calibre, very strategic people with a very strong team orientation – results orientation is so critical when you are looking at growing an organisation. I look for people who have a strong interest in brands, which is important to us in terms of our business overall. Character and integrity is very important in who makes up this team.
One of the other things that was important was structuring our organisation in such a way that we put a lot more emphasis on our retail relationships and also on retail planning. We had our structure supporting retail because obviously retail is a very important part of the mix for us. Consumers engage with our brands in many different ways, through television and the Warner Bros theme parks and different types of marketing programs we might do. But you don’t get away from the fact that retail is one of the most important ways to engage with consumers because it is actually the buying point for consumers. We restructured to have more support for retail efforts.
A third thing that was really important was our strategic alliance. We used to be a business that was very matrixed up, we had a lot of licencees who owned smaller pieces of the business. What we realised was that it was really important to focus less on having a lot of licences and more on having strategic alliances. That allowed us to align ourselves with partners that owned a much bigger part of our business and it meant that we could be so much more efficient and effective in providing solutions to the marketplace. It tangibly impacts our business because then when we are presenting a solution to retail we can coalesce around a few partners that can work collaboratively around one overarching solution, which is a lot harder to do when a lot of folks have little pieces of the business.
When I think about our significant growth from five years ago to now, it does come down to those things.
If we look at our business today versus where we were five years ago, you are looking at a business that is now more than 100% growth. We have basically doubled our business over the next five years.
I can’t disclose that.
[IBISWorld records Warner Bros Entertainment as generating total revenue of for the Australian market of $409,216,000 in 2011 including sales and other revenue].
Cara Waters is a former SmartCompany editor. Previously, Cara was a senior reporter for the Financial Times’ website and worked for The Sunday Times in London.
